


Harkas and the Lads Get Drunk

by thetealord



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Drinking, Drunk Shenanigans, Emetophobia (minor), F/F, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:49:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8428534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetealord/pseuds/thetealord
Summary: What is says on the tin. A commission, featuring Harkas, Lahen, Brant, Alvo, and some sylphs.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NotReallyHere (Actuallysortahere)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Actuallysortahere/gifts).



“Hey guys,” Harkas slurred after her fifth, or tenth, or twentieth drink, lifting the empty bottle. “Lessss go geth ssssmashed.”

“Yer alrdy smashed,” Lahen mumbled, leaning back on his stool so far he lost his grip and went tumbling backwards. “Nonofyou saw that,” he drawled, voice heavy, and he pointed at brant. “Th’ hey this is all your fault I lost my balance.”

Brant just shrugged and uncorked another bottle.

“Hey, no, wait, I know,” Alvo said, trying to sip from a bottle that was already empty. “Since we’re allllll drunk as piss, let’s go do something really… really cool.”

“Like what?” Brant asked, “What’d be… cool.”

“You know what’s cool?” Alvo said, snickering. “The Vault.”

The others all groaned. “Mm not,” Lahen mumbled, “Doin that shit.”

“You know what I want?” Harkas said. “Mushrooms.” The others all solemnly agreed that mushrooms sounded like a fantastic idea and then,

“Where can we get mushrooms?” Alvo pondered.

“I know,” said Brant, “I know. The Sylphs, they’ve got… like… tons. Of mushrooms. Everything is a mushroom. So if we go there, we’ll be surrounded by mushrooms.”

Everyone nodded like that was the best thing they’d heard all day, and Lahen started a teleport, cursing and stopping a few times until he finally got it just right and they reappeared.

“This does not look like the Sylphlands,” Brant said as they stood in the middle of Camp Dragonhead, all of them suddenly shivering and freezing cold.

“Okay, ommmmkay,” Lahen said, “I got it this time.” He frowned, concentrating as hard as he possibly could, and when they appeared again, they surprisingly were at the Aetheryte near the Hawthorne Hut.

“Allllllll right,” Harkas said, since it was actually her idea to begin with, at least, she was pretty sure it was. “Let’s go.” The Hawthorne hut was relatively dark, the only people about the Wood Wailers, strewn across the camp. A few of the Elezen gave them an odd look or a nod. One of them said, ‘Careful out there tonight kids,’ as they passed, but otherwise they stumbled and wandered out into the Twelveswood with no one trying to stop them.

Even as drunk as she was, Harkas had been to the Slyphlands enough times that she could find her way without having to think about it too hard, and they only got sidetracked in the Bramblepatch once when Alvo saw a boar and thought it was Aymeric, only to discover that it was, well… a boar, and Lahen beat it down with one of his Astrologian cards.

Alvo only got tangled once in the brambles on the way out and then, finally, they were on their way to the Sylphlands again.

“Okay guys,” Harkas said as they reached the bridge, “hold on,” she snickered, “I gotta… I got something important to do.” She slipped off into the bushes where she’d stashed a very important outfit at a point she couldn’t quite remember, nor could she remember why it was there but well, it was, and she put it on, picked up her axe, and leaped from the bushes at her friends. “BUG RETURNS!”

Alvo broke out into applause, as did Brant, while Lahen went to puke suddenly in the undergrowth.

“MY FIRST ACT AS BUG,” Harkas vowed, “DESTROY GARLEANS!” She took off at a dash across the bridge, with the others, including a suddenly very wobbly Lahen, forced to follow, tripping over tree roots and monsters that snapped at their heels as they ran by. Brant punched one of them in the face, even though he had no idea if it was a monster he punched in the face or one of his friends, until Lahen woke up the next day with a black eye among other things.

Alvo tripped and ended up sprawled in a mud puddle, Lahen tangled up in an Ochu, while Harkas hardly noticed, charging ahead.

There was a small cluster of Garleans gathered near the border between the Larkscall and the Sylphlands themselves, where the tempered Sylphs made their home. “DEATH TO GARLEMAD OR … SMTHIN!” Harkas roared as she swept in to attack them. 

At first, the Garleans just stared at this.. bug, thing, attacking them with a giant axe, but when she _actually_ started to attack, they drew their guns, pointing and firing. The bullets reflected beautifully off Harkas’s strong Bug Armor and with the Might of her Axe she drove them away! Or killed them, or at least she thought, because the next second she found herself half passed out on the ground with all the Garleans and her friends gone.

She sat up. Bug was not afraid despite the darkness and quiet of the wood, aside from the occasional morbal or ziz screech in the distance. Bug was never afraid. Bug picked up Bug’s axe and went to find Bug friends, clicking to herself as she did. Where were the Garleans, her sworn enemies? They must have fled to Bug’s might, yes, hmm yes, they were no match for Powerful Bug.

Was it possible that Bug was even more drunk than Bug had been previously or had Bug now become completely sober? Impossible to tell. Bug had reached Bug nirvana and felt entirely at peace.

“Hey, hey, hey, Alvo,” Bug heard in the distance, and moved towards the sound, clicking curiously. It was Bug’s friend Brant, leaning on his hands on the ground, pointing at the giant toad a few fulms away. “I dare you to lick the dream toad.”

“Okay,” Alvo said, moving in on the giant beast.

Bug clicked. Two friends. But where… “WHERE IS PINK FRIEND?” Bug asked in her booming Bug voice.

Brant looked at her and shrugged. Alvo, who was latched onto the dream toad with the dream toad’s tongue also latched around him, laughing about how it tickled, said through the laughs, “I think he got eaten by a morbol.”

Bug considered this for a moment. “BUG THOUGHT HE WAS MARRIED,” she said, “BUT OKAY.”

“I mean,” Brant grinned, “Alvo is married too and he fucked the enttttirrrrrrre Vmngf-vault.”

“BUT THAT WAS BEFORE HE WAS MARRIED,” Bug insisted.

“Um, guys????” Alvo asked, “This doesn’t tickle anymore!”

“Put a bandage on it,” Brant told him before rolling over promptly into a mud puddle and almost off the edge of a small cliff.

“BUG WILL RESCUE YOU!” Bug declared, cleaving the dream toad in two in one fell swipe. Alvo groaned and rolled away from the sticky grasp of its toady tongue.

Then Bug looked up and Bug saw…. Y’shtola.

—

Meanwhile, in the belly of a Morbol, Lahen was very systematically working on cutting his way out with a deck of cards, as systematically as a drunk cat could. He had no idea how he’d ended up in the Morbol only that he was there and, well, it was very uncomfortable, and he was very annoyed, and those three were going to face hell when he got out because he was going to give them all A BILLION PAPERCUTS.

—

“So how do dream toads taste?” Brant asked.

Alvo laughed. “Not as good as my Vault axe.” He paused. “Wait, did that make any sense? And where’s Bug?”

“Where _is_ Bug?”

“I thought you were watching Bug. Come on Brant, you’re the,” he hiccuped, “adult here.”

“I’m not,” Brant waved him off and went back to his mud puddle. “I feel too… dead to get up, I’m dying.”

“I want Dad,” Alvo whined. “That toad made me all gooey.”

“Me too.” Brant sat up and put his head directly in a thornbush again, cursing and tugging himself out, then fell over into the grass again and laughed. “Hey look a giant turkey.”

—

Y’shtola beckoned to Bug and Bug followed. She followed her distant white, beautiful form through thickets and over fallen logs and across the grass, deep into the Sylphlands, where the mist hung deep and the pools of water reflected the purple hues of the clouds above them.

When she caught up, Bug gazed upon Y’shtola and sat with her in the grass. “Does Y’shtola know,” Bug asked, “Where the Garleans went? Bug tried to destroy them with Bug’s mighty axe but…”

Y’shtola laughed, that beautiful melody, and shook her head. And then, Bug turned and saw.. Y’shtola, again? And yes, was that… a third Y’shtola, coming up on Bug’s other side.

Bug’s eyes widened. Three Y’shtolas? Yes, there could be no mistaking it, there were indeed three Y’shtolas in front of her now, all of them beautiful, perfect. Bug sighed as she sat in the grass with the three Y’shtolas kneeling down around her, smiling at her. Could there be any place in the world better than this?

“You’re very fond of us, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Bug smiled, taking them all in. Three Y’shtolas was paradise. They were so lovely, all three of them, yes. She could have easily fallen asleep there, with the Y’shtolas watching over her.

Three Y’shtolas….

Three Y’shtolas.

And then it occured to her in a sudden snap of half-drunken awareness, that three Y’stholas was… not possible, was it? She must be hallucinating. Or, something was very, very wrong… There couldn’t be three real Y’shtolas. There was only one who was real, one Y’shtola that was _her_ Y’sthola.

Bug stood, backing up quickly, but still she wouldn’t dare draw her axe on one of her closest friends. “WHICH ONES OF YOU,” Bug declared, “ARE FIVE WHITE CATS IN A TRENCH COAT?”

The Y’shtolas looked at each other, dumbfounded by Bug’s sudden realization, then Y’shtola 2 pointed accusingly at Y’shtola 1. “I’m clearly the real Y’shtola. You see? Her ears are all wrong.”

“Well what about you?” quipped Y’shtola 3, “Your tail isn’t the right length, and your hair is too long!”

“Well maybe yours is too short!” Y’shtola 2 snapped back. The second and third Y’shtola began to bicker while the first stood quietly and watched, arms folded.

“THEN YOU ARE THE REAL Y’SHTOLA,” Harkas beamed at the first one, and she laughed again. 

“Indeed.”

And then Y’shtola heard something behind her and turned, and Harkas turned with her, and the other two Y’shtolas did as well, as an enormous Morbol came crawling through the trees.

—

Lahen could feel the accursed Morbol moving underneath him as it lumbered about through the forest. He was making some progress cutting his way through its slimy interior flesh with nothing but cards, but it was not pleasant work. There were cuts everywhere, some deep ones, but he still wasn’t near at all to cutting himself out of the foul creature’s stomach. If anything, he was giving it bad stomach pains.

He stopped suddenly, taking a deep breath and considering his options. If he couldn’t cut his way out, there were only two ways to go. Out the mouth or out the… other end. Did Morbals even do that? He wasn’t exactly a Morbol expert, that title belonged to another Miqo’te.

Still, even if it was true that finding the butt may be the best way, going out the head would probably be more pleasant.

“Heyyyyy!” he shouted, voice still slurred from drink, as he began splashing about it the Morbol’s belly. “Puke me out or something you nasty tentacle abomination!”

He had no idea whether it was the cuts from the cards or the shouting and kicking, but he felt himself being lifted up on some very unpleasant Morbol goo and the next thing he knew he was being tossed out its great toothy Morboly jaw, directly on top of three white-headed, very familiar looking Miqos.

Each of the Y’shtolas screeched and Harkas looked on in vague disgust and horror as the Morbol threw up Lahen and some other nasty looking goop directly onto all of them. At once, all three Y’shtolas poofed up in smoke, becoming three, very angry, very sticky, bickering tempered sylphs.

“This is all That One’s fault!” one of them insisted. “Now This One is all sticky!”

“This One is also sticky!” One of the others declared. “This was all the idea of Those Ones!”

And Harkas, tossing her axe aside, pulled off her Vath helmet and leaped towards the one sylph she had so definitely thought was Y’shtola. “RED CABBAGE IS INFERIOR TO REGULAR CABBAGE!” she screeched as she started wailing on the sylph with the helmet, though what she really meant was, ‘YOU TRICKED ME YOU NASTY VERMIN’.

Lahen, after laying sticky on the ground, disgusted and annoyed, watched as the Morbol turned and crawled away again, coughed a few times and gazed upon the sight of Harkas beating down the first, and then the other two tempered sylphs with her Vath helmet, still screaming something about cabbage.

“IIIIIIIII quit,” Lahen said, even though Harkas wasn’t listening in the least.

—

Brant wasn’t wrong. There was a giant turkey. It wasn’t even just a large turkey it was really, really huge. Bigger than either of them, fully cooked and displayed on an equally large dinner platter. 

Alvo looked at Brant and Brant looked at Alvo, grinning. Brant was looking a bit dazed, like he was about to pass out any second, but he pointed at the turkey. “I’ll pay you like… a hundred gil to eat the entire thing.”

“A hundred?” Alvo snorted. “That’s like enough for a whole lot of uh… nothing.”

“Okay, a thousand,” Brant said.

“Sold.” Still, the turkey was kind of mysterious, just sitting there in the open with nothing to protect itself from all the creatures of the forest, and he didn’t remember it being there a few minutes ago. It was definitely a turkey, though, that could not be denied, and he made his way up to it like a secret spy of some kind, darting from one bush to another, until he reached it, opened his jaw and took one, huge, single bite, gripping its perfectly baked turkey flesh.

“Ow!” Said the turkey, and Alvo was flung off, slamming into Brant who’d been sneaking over to take a look, both of them tumbling backwards into another thorn bush, just as the turkey exploded in a puff of purple smoke into three very angry-looking tempered sylphs. And at that moment, there was a long high-pitched battle cry, and Harkas, still half dressed as a bug, came bombarding through the trees, axe nowhere in sight but vath cap in hand.

“BE GONE PURPLE CABBAGES!” she bellowed, descending on the sylphs as she began beating them down mercilessly with the immitation bug helmet.

Alvo burst back out of the thorn bush, clothes torn and skin scratched, extremely confused, took in the sight, and doubled over wheezing with laughter. Brant, beside him, also scratched and stumbling, laughed for a solid minute and then stopped abruptly as Lahen finally caught up to Harkas, panting and dragging Harkas’ axe behind him, covered in Morbol slime.

“Heyyyy guysssss,” Lahen said, tired and still annoyed, wobbling on his feet. He pointed at Brant, opened his mouth to say something, and Brant just burst into greater laughter.

“You’re all covered in ss-s-slime!” he managed to get out through choked up laughs, like it was the greatest thing he’d ever seen.

“Hey, hey Lahen,” Alvo said from where he’d fallen to the ground. “I dare you to drink the milkroot in that Milkroot Cluster.” He pointed the wandering viney creature and burst into laughter again.

Lahen sat down on the ground and flopped onto his back. “Jusssst pour it down my throat, lads, I’m toooo drunk to sthink.”

Strangely enough, milkroot didn’t taste all that bad, and he only spit it all over Brant’s face once.

By the time Harkas was finished warding off the purple cabbages, the four of them were exhausted, collapsed in a tired, dazed group on the grass, and not for the first time that night, Harkas passed out, the others following suit.

—

The next morning, Harkas awoke with a pounding headache, her head pillowed on soft leaves, with one of the sylphs from Little Solace hovering over her. The sylphs, in sylph terms, explained that Harkas and the others had somehow ended up wandering back towards Little Solace and were taken in for the night. The sylphs were more than happy to make them comfortable while they recovered. Indeed, she saw Alvo, Brant, and Lahen all stretched out snoring in a line next to him, each on their own bed of leaves.

Honestly, she couldn’t quite remember the events of the previous night, and when she tried to think about it too hard her head pounded. As she let herself fall asleep again, she decided, maybe it was better not to know.


End file.
